What’s to be done in Gaza?

 

Rabbi Michael Lerner looks at the issue from both sides and asks for a compassionate,

God-centered response.  The following are excerpts from his article of Jan. 5, 2009.

 

No country in the world is going to ignore the provocation of rockets being launched from neighboring territory day after day…

    
But the kind of response matters. 

Massive bombings of the sort that have thus far killed over 400 Palestinians and wounded 1,000 other civilians is a classic example of a disproportionate response. [Editor’s update 1/14/09 the number was 1,010, among them 315 children and 95 women, and over 4,700 other civilians wounded. In contrast, 13 Israelis were killed, 3 civilians, 4 soldiers by friendly fire, 6 in conflict.]

…

[J]ust as Hamas’ indiscriminate bombing of population centers is a crime against humanity, so is Israel’s massive attack against civilians ... Israel's human rights violations during the cease fire included a massive cut off of food and other vital necessities--a crime against international law.

On the other hand, any understanding of the situation must also include acknowledgment of the Post Traumatic Stress Disorder faced by Israelis living under the constant threat of terrorism, to which the katyushka bombings, however ineffective militarily, contribute massively.

 

Hamas has made it clear that it would accept the terms of the Saudi Arabian peace agreement, [on 1/15 they agreed in principle to an Egyptian ceasefire proposal] though it would never formally recognize Israel. It would live peacefully in a two state arrangement, but it would never acknowledge Israel’s right to exist. This position is unnecessarily provocative, and represents deep self-destructiveness on the part of Palestinians who believe that this failure to acknowledge Israel’s rights is the only symbolic weapon they have left. To many Israelis, trapped in their own history as survivors of genocide and oppression, Hamas’ refusal to give official recognition is a way of saying, “We’ll wait till we have adequate military power, and then we’ll break any de facto truce and ceasefire and use that power to wipe out Israel…”

 

Israel seeks to wipe out Hamas. But even if it killed every one of Hamas' twenty-thousand members in Gaza, it would not extinguish the impulse toward Islamic fundamentalism that Hamas represents. Surely Israelis by now know that killing only creates new generations of angry people who will be the next wave of terrorists. So what does Israel really seek? Probably it hopes to make Hamas so powerless that it loses the election against Fatah, and then the Palestinian Authority, …will negotiate a peace treaty that creates a "Palestinian state" that is,… in short a Palestinian state that will be neither economically nor politically viable…. Yet this will not generate long-term peace, but only a temporary rest in the fighting. Only a fully just settlement that allows Palestinians a real state that incorporates all of the West Bank and Gaza (with minor border modifications as detailed in the Geneva Accord of 2003) and that provides real compensation for Palestinian refugees, and a state created in a spirit of generosity and genuine caring on the part of Israel, will end the violence and provide Israel with lasting safety.

…

The way to defeat Hamas is through meeting the legitimate needs of the Palestinian people and doing so in a spirit of genuine caring, in which the Jews of the world and the Israeli people show that they recognize Palestinians as our brothers and sisters, made in God's image and equally precious to God as the Jewish people. In short, by Jews taking seriously our reliance on God and God's message that the world should be based on love, generosity, caring, kindness, and compassion.

 

Rabbi Michael Lerner is editor of “Tikkun,” a prominent progressive Jewish and interfaith magazine and chair of the interfaith Network of Spiritual Progressives.

Rabbi Michael Lerner, “Israel in Gaza”, January 5, 2009 http://files.tikkun.org/current/article.php/20090102124321774

 

Please also see http://www.spiritualprogressives.org/article.php?story=gaza_text for text of a full page NY Times ad offering a solution to the problem.

 

                                                                                         1/25/09 Issue 4